Stand up, America!

Joseph Farah is founder, editor and CEO of WND and a nationally syndicated columnist with Creators News Service.. He is the author or co-author of 13 books, including his latest, "The Tea Party Manifesto," and his classic, "Taking America Back," now in its third edition and 14th printing. Farah is the former editor of the legendary Sacramento Union and other major-market dailies.

Please note that Castaneda is now a professor at New York University. He’s living the good life in Manhattan – at least until the next terror strike on the city that never sleeps.

He went on to describe immigration reform as amnesty for all Mexicans living illegally in the United States, the admission of some 5 million additional Mexican citizens to the United States over the next 10 years, and massive increases in U.S. aid to that country.

In exchange for the legalization of millions of Mexicans and billions of dollars in U.S. “assistance,” Castaneda said Mexico would offer “tough” but “non-coercive” assistance in the effort to prevent terrorists from entering the United States via Mexico.

Castaneda conceded Mexico has lost control of its own southern border, and cannot verify the true identities of people to whom it has issued ID documents.

Jorge Castaneda is not some obscure voice from Mexico’s distant political past. He served as foreign minister in the current Mexican administration. It is imperative that the [Vicente] Fox government issue a formal repudiation of Castaneda’s remarks and assure the American public that their cooperation in the war against terrorism will not come at the price of extortion.

Most surprising about this testimony, however, was not the irresponsible comments of a member of the Mexican political elite, but the reaction of U.S. senators to this blatant blackmail by a man whose own immigration status needs investigation.

Senators, including John McCain and Richard Lugar – tacitly, meekly and embarrassingly – accepted Castenada’s demands for open borders as a legitimate price for yet another empty promise from Mexico of cooperation in dealing with the very real infiltration of our border by terrorists using Mexico as their launching pad.

This is tantamount to an act of war.

As Stein put it:

When anyone, much less a former foreign minister of a supposedly friendly nation, comes before a committee of the United States Senate, and issues ultimatums and thinly veiled threats against the United States, one would expect outrage and condemnation from members of Congress.

Instead, we got meek acquiescence or deafening silence from the members who were present. If the government of Mexico is not prepared to join us in this struggle, without conditions, then it cannot claim to be an ally and our government must view them as such. Allies do not engage in extortion.

FAIR is calling upon the Bush administration and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice to protest formally Castaneda’s demands with the Mexican government.

“If Colin Powell were to make similarly outrageous demands in a foreign capital, we would expect a reply and repudiation from the American government,” he said. “We should expect no less from the current government of Mexico.”